Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
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11393 results(419 / 456)
Urban agriculture and urban land use planning: Need for a synthesis in metropolitan Lagos, Nigeria
2009Adedeji Adedeji, H Oludare, Ademiluyi · Journal of Geography and Regional Planning · Nigeria
This discussion of urban agriculture and urban land use planning in metropolitan Lagos, Nigeria, frames urban agriculture as a crisis response and survival strategy for the urban poor that contributes to food security, while stating that urban agriculture production systems can pose risks to public health and the environment through inappropriate or excessive use of agricultural inputs — including pesticides, nitrogen, and raw organic matter containing heavy metal residues. It recommends that urban land use planners promote multifunctional land use and greater community participation in managing urban open spaces.
Contamination & food safetyCommunityPolicyWelfareMiranda Martinez · Social movement studies · United States (New York City)
This study of the community garden preservation movement on the Lower East Side of New York examines the role of activist movement framing in the struggle to save hundreds of gardens from destruction. Through repeated confrontations with the Giuliani administration, gardeners de-routinized the process of urban redevelopment by portraying the loss of a garden as an unimaginable violation against themselves and the city. This reframing helped activists compensate for their disempowered political status and was instrumental in forcing the Giuliani administration to negotiate to save the gardens.
CommunityPolicyAllie Comet · Scholarship @ Claremont (The Claremont Colleges) · United States (California)
This historical analysis of Claremont, California, uses "The Farm" — a two-acre food forest on the Pomona College campus — as a starting point to trace the role food and agriculture have played in the development of the Claremont area, and discusses current local food system alternatives emerging in the area.
CommunityFood sovereignty & justiceE. Peduto, D. Satdinova · · United Kingdom
The available abstract is fragmentary and cuts off mid-sentence, but it states that some areas of London have already advanced considerably under the "Capital Growth" initiative launched in November 2008. That initiative is described as aiming to turn 2,012 pieces of land into green spaces for growing food, though the abstract breaks off before providing further study details or findings.
PolicyCommunityClimate changeCatherine Sands, Lee Reed, Krista Harper, Maggie Shar · Practicing Anthropology · United States
In spring 2008, a grassroots organization called Fertile Ground conducted a participatory Photovoice evaluation of its school garden program with fifth-grade students at Williamsburg Elementary School in rural western Massachusetts, United States. Photovoice places cameras in participants' hands so they document and discuss their own concerns and perspectives. The project aimed to capture what students, after six years of hands-on garden programming, understood about food, nutrition, and community food systems, and their impressions of leadership, fellowship, and care for land and community. The article outlines the evaluation's context and design but does not report specific quantitative findings.
Food educationCommunityHealthEmma Schroeder, Timothy Kolosick · · United States
This is an oral history interview record concerning the Eagle Heights Community Garden in the United States. In a 2009 interview with Emma Schroeder, Timothy Kolosick recounted his time as garden chairman, growing horseradish, cultivation techniques brought by foreign students, using tires to deter pests, organic gardening, and weed management, and referenced earlier gardening experience he and his wife gained in Europe. The interview was recorded for inclusion in a master's thesis on the Eagle Heights Community Gardens.
CommunityLaura Terragni, Hanne Torjusen, Gunnar Vittersø · Anthropology of food · Europe
Drawing on studies conducted over the past 15 years at the Norwegian National Institute for Consumer Research (SIFO), this article analyzes alternative food consumption in Norway centered on organic food. Tracing the organic movement from its origins, it shows organic products have gained a notable position within the conventional market even as they face conventionalization, while other alternative initiatives are emerging, including fair trade, farmers' markets, farm food outlets, box schemes, and community supported agriculture (CSA). It argues the consumer's role must be understood contextually, and that products consumers identify as "alternative" are those that, in a given time and place, are socially constructed to best reflect alternative values.
CSA & TeikeiCommunityFood sovereignty & justiceP. S. Datta, Shipra Tyagi · · India
Peri-urban agriculture in the Delhi-NCR area is highly dependent on groundwater availability amid rapid urbanization. This study integrates dynamic δ18O isotopic composition data on groundwater with static data such as elevation of recharge sites to delineate potential recharge zones and hydrodynamic aquifer zones. Significant δ18O-elevation relationships were found (r² = 0.808 to 0.982), with recharge-site elevation resolutions of about 20m in the northwest and 75m in the southwest, identifying potential recharge zones at elevations of 210-230m in the northwest and above 260m in the south. However, variation in groundwater isotopic composition over time indicates that the corresponding aquifers are relatively small and of low productivity, and points to the likely presence of many low-permeability zones in the northwestern recharge areas — a constraint on the groundwater resources that sustain peri-urban agriculture there.
Environmental trade-offsPolicyCommunityGayathri Devi, Stephanie Buechler · Practical Action Publishing eBooks · India
A book chapter (in Hovorka, de Zeeuw and Njenga, eds., "Women feeding cities: mainstreaming gender in urban agriculture and food security," Practical Action Publishing, 2009) addresses gender dimensions of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Hyderabad, India. The abstract provided is only the editorial citation, with no method or findings stated.
CommunityShazia Iram, Iftikhar Ahmad, Doris Stüben · Pakistan Journal of Botany · Asia
Soil samples were collected from peri-urban agricultural land in Lahore, Pakistan, irrigated by industrial and sewerage waste from the Hudiara drain, and from mine waste soil in Wiesloch, Germany, and analyzed for heavy metals by X-ray fluorescence and ICP-MS and for fungal diversity and frequency by a soil dilution method. X-ray fluorescence found higher Zn, As and Pb in the German mine waste soil, and the more sensitive ICP-MS found higher Fe, Mn, Cu, As, Sr, Mo, Cd, Sb, Ti, Zn and Pb there as well; the Pakistani peri-urban soils had lower heavy metal concentrations than the German mine waste but higher overall fungal frequency and diversity. Testing radial growth of isolated Aspergillus niger, A. flavus and A. nodulans against CdCl2, CuSO4, NiCl2 and ZnCl2 at 1-40 ppm, all tested fungi tolerated ZnCl2 (25 ppm) and NiCl2 (12 ppm) but none tolerated CdCl2 or CuSO4.
Contamination & food safetyPeri-urban agricultureAbha Singh, Salahuddin Mohd. · National Geographical Journal of India · India
In-depth field research around the Iglas sewage pumping station on the Aligarh-Mathura road in Aligarh, India, surveyed 41 farming households and some consumers across five peri-urban villages — Bhojpura, Hari Narayan ki Sarai, Hajipur Chohata, Kheri Khwaja Buddha and Daurala Nirpal — that had used urban wastewater for irrigation for many years. Farmers and vegetable sellers reported suffering from ailments including diarrhoeal disease, typhoid fever, hookworm, amoebiasis and skin infections, yet their primary concern was securing enough water to sustain crop productivity and income, while consumers were more focused on getting a fresh, steady supply of vegetables than on the health risk.
Contamination & food safetyHealthCommunityPing Liu · Xiandai riben jingji · Japan
A discussion piece traces the development of "creative agriculture" among Japanese farmers since the early 1970s, citing Oita Prefecture's One Village, One Product movement as an early representative example. It describes recent Japanese government measures — promoting green tourism, developing urban agriculture, establishing urban gardens, building attractive rural environments and homes, and encouraging urban residents to move to villages for farm work or experiences in an urban-rural "amphibian" lifestyle — that it says have brought Japan's creative agriculture into a new stage of development.
Urban–rural linkageCommunityPolicyG. Palaniappan, Christine King · Queensland's institutional digital repository (The University of Queensland) · Australia
A conceptual paper framing local food production systems—termed "alternative farming"—against a backdrop of global environmental changes (retreating sea ice, landscape drying, shifts in seasonal timing and animal migration) and climate-driven increases in energy prices and dependence on fossil fuels, which the authors say have raised interest in localization and sustainability among communities worldwide. It examines systems including organics, natural farming, biodynamics, permaculture, community gardens, and community-supported agriculture (CSA) in terms of how they might contribute to localizing food production and consumption, and discusses the transition from globalized to localized farming and re-localization's ecological and social dimensions. The paper argues that sustainability can be grounded in local ecological, social, economic, and political systems, but the discussion is conceptual rather than based on presented empirical data.
Food sovereignty & justiceCommunityEconomicsOrganic cycleXiangyang Qin · Journal of Library and Information Sciences in Agriculture · China
Examines the science-and-technology-coordinator system first established in Beijing, China, to address a shortage of rural science and technology services. Based on an analysis of questionnaire responses, the authors describe the current situation and problems of the coordinator system and put forward suggestions for improving coordinators' quality. The abstract gives no sample size, response rate or quantified results.
PolicyCommunityDigital agricultureSinan Koont · Monthly Review · Cuba
An article describes the development, over roughly fifteen years since the 1990s, of urban agriculture in Havana, Cuba, a capital city of more than two million people. It notes that the term "urban agriculture" in Cuba is used more inclusively than typical usage, encompassing urban fringe and suburban lands — the entire cultivated area of the Province of the City of Havana is classified as urban agriculture. The article provides no specific yield or participation figures.
CommunityFood sovereignty & justicePolicyEconomicsC. T. de T. Machado, A. T. Machado · · Global
This review compiles ecological principles for urban agriculture—crop diversity, organic and mineral-based fertilizers, and non-toxic pest and disease management—and describes international examples such as diversified plots in Austria and the "organoponico" system in Cuba. It surveys Brazilian experiences from pioneering ecological urban agriculture in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, to later programs in Campinas (São Paulo) and Natal (Rio Grande do Norte), as well as initiatives in Rio de Janeiro, the São Paulo municipal urban agriculture program, and Brasília, presenting the rationale, alternatives, and constraints of ecologically based crop management in urban agriculture.
Organic cycleCommunityFood educationEnslin Van Rooyen · Medical record news · South Africa
Focusing on the City of Johannesburg, South Africa, this policy discussion paper examines the potential of using the ward committee system—part of the South African local government structure—as a vehicle for urban farming programs. It argues it may be more efficient to direct limited resources toward helping urban residents become self-sufficient urban farmers rather than merely acquiring and distributing food, which sustains dependency on government, while noting that knowledge about effective administration for food security among developing-country municipalities is limited, with few Southern African municipalities having explicit policies and even fewer having successfully incorporated such programs; it recommends municipal decision-makers adopt an issue-driven, pro-poor growth approach, and states that urban farming is not inherently equivalent to Local Economic Development but may serve as a catalyst toward it.
PolicyCommunityWelfareTian Yu-min · Vocational and Technical Education · China
This policy discussion argues that to achieve the goal of developing modern coastal urban agriculture in Tianjin, China, agricultural colleges should make full use of talent, expertise, academic disciplines, and science and technology; form a rational, scientific teaching philosophy; innovate talent-training models; adjust specialty structures to match talent demand; reform education and teaching patterns; establish a system for popularizing agricultural science; build a system guiding graduates toward rural areas; and encourage graduates to work or start enterprises at the grassroots level in rural areas.
Food educationPeri-urban agriculturePolicy南京“一村一品”发展模式探析
2009尚华夏, 俞继东, 周四清, 储健 · 江苏农村经济 · China
A study of Nanjing, China, analyzes the city's "One Village, One Product" development model under its urban agriculture strategy, reporting that Nanjing has 150 specialized villages and 10 specialized towns, more than half of which are effectively linked with leading agribusiness enterprises. It argues that cultivating dominant industries with clear comparative advantage — based on local resources, location, industrial base, and market conditions — underpins the "one village, one product / one town, one industry" approach.
EconomicsPeri-urban agriculturePolicyPeter A. Werrell, Gail Langellotto, Shannon U. Morath, Kevin C. Matteson · Cities and the Environment · United States (New York City)
A study in New York City community gardens examined how the spatial area dedicated to cucumbers (Cucumis sativus), relative to other flowering plants, influenced the deposition of conspecific and heterospecific pollen on cucumber plants, and also examined the effect of overall garden size on that pollen deposition. Female flowers were collected from potted cucumber plants placed experimentally in the gardens for the study, as well as from cucumbers established in raised beds by community garden members; pollen grains were isolated in the laboratory by acetolysis and the numbers of heterospecific and conspecific pollen grains were quantified. The abstract does not report quantitative results or conclusions.
PollinatorsBiodiversityCommunityXu Hong-Xia, Jing Tao, Tomooka Norihiko, Kaga Akito, Isemura Takehisa, Vaughan Duncan A. · Genome, 51(9): 728-738 · Japan
Using 13 SSRs on 616 azuki accessions from eight Asian countries, the study found highly diverse Japanese wild germplasm, supporting Japan as a domestication center, while cultivated azuki from China, Korea, and Japan were genetically distinct.
Heirloom & landraceBiodiversityAlaimo K., Packnett E., Miles R. A., Kruger D. J. · Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 40(2):94-101 · United States
Cross-sectional phone survey of 766 adults in Flint, Michigan. Households participating in community gardens were far more likely (32% vs 18%) to consume fruits and vegetables at least five times daily.
HealthCommunity森ビル株式会社 · 環境コミュニケーション 39巻6号 pp.30-31 · Japan
Official technical literature explaining Mori Building's 'Vertical Garden City' concept, describing pioneering private redevelopment rooftop farming and greening including paddy fields and mochi-rice harvest at Roppongi Hills and environmental community creation.
CommunityBiodiversityPolicySharashkin L. · University of Missouri-Columbia (PhD Dissertation) · Russia (Vladimir Region)
A PhD dissertation examining 1,500 Vladimir Region families to show that household food gardens underpin more than half of Russia's agricultural output and fulfil wide-ranging economic, social, and cultural functions.
EconomicsCommunityWelfareFood education· International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability · Malawi
Case study in two Malawian districts finding that adopters of low-cost treadle pump irrigation had higher net farm income per hectare than non-adopters.
DIYEconomics